Following Lady Mairie's death, aged 88, last year, Sotheby's said it would need three days to sell
her huge collection of more than 2,000 lots, describing it as one of
the finest postage stamp collections to appear on the market in 25
years.

The collection includes a Penny Black used on the first day of official use - May 6, 1840 - which has an estimated value of £70,000.

And as well as tens of thousands of stamps, there are early examples of printed envelopes and letters relating to another of her private passions - Victorian sensations and scandals.

Lady Mairi Bury at the christening of her grandson, Charles Villiers, in 1963

Lady Mairi was born in to fabulous wealth and lived her life in the ancestral mansion, Mount Stewart in County Down, which was taken over by the National Trust in 1977.

She began collecting stamps when she was eight, had learned to fly by the time she was 11,and as a teenager visited Germany and met Adolf Hitler, whom she later remembered as 'nondescript'.

She served in the transport section of the Women’s Legion in London during the Second World War.